Topaz Video 1.7.1

Topaz Video is the new name for Topaz Video AI, and version 1.7.1 is the current release.

The new name came with a fresh start at version 1.0 after Video AI 7.1.5, so the lower number is the newer program.

It also came with a bigger change: since October 2025 you can only buy it as a subscription.

If you own a perpetual Video AI licence, 7.1.5 is still on our download page and keeps working, it just gets no more updates. Everyone else can install 1.7.1, try it on their own footage, and decide whether the results are worth a yearly fee.

What Topaz Video Actually Does

You load a clip, pick an enhancement, preview a few seconds next to the original, and export. The work is done by AI models trained on huge amounts of video, which rebuild detail instead of just stretching pixels.

• Upscaling - SD or HD footage up to 4K and beyond, with models for different sources: Proteus for general footage you can fine-tune, Artemis for clean video, Iris for faces and Gaia for animation and CG.
• Frame interpolation - the Apollo and Chronos models add in-between frames for slow motion, or to turn 24 fps footage into smooth 60 fps.
• Denoise and deinterlace - removes grain and compression noise, and turns interlaced camcorder and TV recordings, such as MiniDV tapes, into clean progressive video.
• Stabilization - steadies shaky handheld clips.
• SDR to HDR - the Hyperion model turns standard footage into HDR.
• Starlight - the newest and heaviest models, aimed at badly damaged or very low-resolution footage.

Most models run on your own graphics card. The Starlight models mostly run in Topaz's cloud and use credits, which are paid for on top of the subscription.

Running Starlight on your own PC needs the Pro plan and a strong card. Starlight Mini, the lightest of them, wants at least 10GB of video memory.

What Is New in Topaz Video 1.7.1

• Hyperion 2.5 - the SDR to HDR model no longer leaves occasional ghosting. It needs 12GB of video memory and 32GB of system RAM.
• Model Manager - shows how big each model is and which ones your hardware can run before you download them.
• Hardware decoding switch - turn GPU decoding of H.264, H.265 and AV1 on or off under Preferences, Application, Processing. Turning it off is a quick fix when a source clip throws decoding errors.
• Export options - an optional Topaz watermark and more metadata written into exported files.
• Fixes - errors with some 10-bit sources, a LUT colour space error, slow Starlight Precise processing and Starlight Mini on supported AMD cards.

On a Mac the installer is now a .pkg file rather than a .dmg. Topaz also warns that macOS 27 currently causes problems, with a fix in progress.

What It Costs and How the Trial Works

Topaz stopped selling perpetual licences on 3 October 2025. At the switch, Topaz Video cost $59 a month or $299 a year, and the Pro plan, which unlocks local Starlight rendering, $699 a year.

Plans have shifted since, so check the price on Topaz Labs' site before you buy. Without a subscription the program runs as a trial with a watermark on exports, which is enough to see whether it rescues your footage.

Perpetual owners keep their licence and the version they paid for. New models and fixes need a subscription.

Which File to Download

Free Alternatives Worth Trying

REAL Video Enhancer is the closest free match. It is open source and upscales and interpolates frames with open models such as RIFE, though it does less on badly damaged footage.

If you only want smoother motion while you watch, SmoothVideo Project adds frames in real time inside your player, with nothing to export.

GeForce RTX owners already have RTX Video Super Resolution, which upscales video as it plays in Chrome, Edge and VLC. Switch it on in the NVIDIA App.

For plain resizing and re-encoding without AI, HandBrake is free and does a clean job. Winxvideo AI is a cheaper paid option with its own upscaler.

For photos rather than video, Topaz's own Topaz Gigapixel does the same job on stills.

Playing the Files You Export

Topaz Video exports H.264, H.265 (HEVC), AV1 and ProRes. H.265 and AV1 files are much smaller than H.264 at the same quality, but Windows needs extra codecs to play them in Photos or Media Player.

For H.265, install the free HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer. For AV1, add the AV1 codec, or open both in VLC, which plays them on its own.

Will Your PC Cope?

Enhancement is slow. On a mid-range graphics card, expect an export to take many times longer than the clip itself, and Starlight takes longer still.

The graphics card matters far more than the processor, and current drivers avoid a lot of failed exports. Update the GeForce driver or AMD Adrenalin before a long job.

Shopping for a card for this kind of work? Our guide to the best GPU for video encoding compares NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.

Quick Questions

Download Topaz Video 1.7.1 and try it on your own footage, or tell us how it handled your clips.